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Perhaps because there are still many people that have not experienced a loved one or a patient that must endure repeated surgeries and procedures in feeble attempts to extend time during the course of a terminal illness. that is why all medical facilities and all states have their own policies to encourage patients to sign health proxy and living will documents in order to make their feelings known. This is not a new or exotic idea. It is not a mandate for euthanasia, either. It takes a certain presence of mind and/or spirituality to accept control of one's own fate in a society that worships advanced medical technology to the extreme.
I'd like to see the actual pamphlet before passing judgment.(edit: just found it - will be reading it over the next few days). I could not find it on the va site yesterday - the link provided in another posting was dead.
All I can gather is that it talked about advance directives but the language was offensive and should have been worded differently.
Unfortunately the little I have read criticizing it comes from people who seem to support prolonging life no matter the quality until the body just simply cannot take all of the interventions any more. I would have liked to hear comment from people that support advance directives and making choices about end-of-life care that include things like hospice and DNR directives.
After a quick skim of the booklet I am not sure what the issue is.
I would like for people who don't like it to tell me the specific page and section they do not care for, so I can better understand what is the problem.
It appears some of the furor is that this is given to people who are not terminally ill, just receiving medical care. I think people should be encouraged to write a living will BEFORE they are in the situation to need one. I don't find it offensive at all that the VA system is encouraging all users to create a living will. Living Will does not mean DNR; one could put down that they want extraordinary measures to be taken and under no circumstances remove a vent, feeding tube, etc...
I'd like to see the actual pamphlet before passing judgment.(edit: just found it - will be reading it over the next few days). I could not find it on the va site yesterday - the link provided in another posting was dead.
All I can gather is that it talked about advance directives but the language was offensive and should have been worded differently.
Unfortunately the little I have read criticizing it comes from people who seem to support prolonging life no matter the quality until the body just simply cannot take all of the interventions any more. I would have liked to hear comment from people that support advance directives and making choices about end-of-life care that include things like hospice and DNR directives.
There is a thread about this in Politics and Controversies - perhaps that's why the mod deleted it?
Anyway, take a look at www.VetVoice.com for a running commentary on this issue. Very interesting.
I am a veteran. I did not retire from the military nor was I injured in the line of duty.
I believe the VA is for those injured in the line of duty and those retired from military service. Not to play lawyer here, but I understood that was the deal when I enlisted.
The issue I am having is people I know (like myself) are applying for VA Benefits. I believe these type people are clogging the system.
Retirees can receive care at a VA hospital or via Tri-Care. The VA's main focus is on treaty service related disabilities, the problem is not people clogging the system but a under funding of the system itself. The best solution at this point is to just offer all Veterans tri care which would cover the rest of your life.
Retirees can receive care at a VA hospital or via Tri-Care. The VA's main focus is on treaty service related disabilities, the problem is not people clogging the system but a under funding of the system itself. The best solution at this point is to just offer all Veterans tri care which would cover the rest of your life.
I disagree for two big reasons.
1). A sizable portion of veterans who use the VA are very low income, they wouldn't be able to pay the annual premiums or deductibles of Tricare (look at what Tricare costs a young adult from 18-26, it'd be much more for a vet).
2). There's no room for them in the military health system, MTF's have grown from a space-A for dependents and retirees to being chock full of dependents and retirees that it takes AD deployable service members months to get speciality appointments. I know more than one service member that started wading through the red tape a week after deployment A only to find no openings until midway into deployment B, and then having to start all over again when they return from deployment B as the referrals have expired.
Even if we added wings to our MTF's, and recruited Dr's and techs like crazy and could handle the patient load, you'd still have military doctors dealing with a very different level of care than what they would deal with in AD populations (having to deal with social issues like homelessness and chronic drug useage, health issues stemming from diabetics and non PTSD related mental health issues).
And you might not want to dump the va population on typical doctors. They aren't going to have the knowledge of the vast resources the VA has for dealing with the health concerns of its patients. And there aren't as many Tricare standard providers out there as you think.
As bad as it might be, the VA is the best solution for Veterans Health Care.
Sure if you sat at a desk and never experienced blown knees, or hearing loss, or TBI or PTSD, or exposure to agent orange or ionizing radiation and keep yourself in good health you'll find many models of care suitable for you, but that's not really who the VA is trying to see. The VA is there to provide the care and resources for our most damaged veterans and it does an excellent job of doing it. There might be some delays, and some of that might be due to vets like you or I who came out of service in good shape (my father in law made the choice to depend on the VA in the years between retirement and getting Medicare, there was an piece on the news the other day about a guy who served a four year stint 30 years ago who wanted 100% disability for recently becoming a diabetic, and voiced that he saw no combat but gave the military 100% and they need to give him 100%).
Those few stories don't spoil the pot, but I am sure they and others like them do clog the system and make it harder for vets truly in need to get access to the VA.
In summary, no one is better at doing the VA than the VA, any other model would be more expensive or less effective than the current model.
I do think the VA could do well by hiring more doctors and nurses, and the use of military hospitals and civilian doctors is a decent stopgap until they do, but shifting the costs to Tricare is a shell game that doesn't really help anyone.
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Has The VA Hospital System Gone Bad?
